Meatballs, marriage and Seth Godin – the London Session:
Popped down to the amazing Church House conference centre behind Westminster Abbey on Tuesday to hear Seth Godin talk, in a rare appearance in London.
As a nice touch the afternoon kicked off with a special ‘unplugged’ session with 50 Tribes members and an intimate Q&A with Seth before the main presentation.
Seth was on good form, delivering an almost ‘Greatest Hits’ set, covering the best bits and themes from Permission Marketing through All Marketers are Liars, Purple Cow, Tribes and big doses of Meatball Sundae, before fielding a 2 hour Q&A.
It seemed liked a mixed bag audience of die-hard Seth disciples, new converts and some others who had been dragged along by friends or colleagues to hear the gospel.
The key ‘penny drop’ moment for many of the new recruits in the audience came during the Q&A when someone asked a question around ‘What can I do in my organisation when the bulk of the people in the middle don’t ‘get it’ (in terms of new marketing, collaborative working etc) and are resistant to change’.
The answer was, of course: don’t bother with them.
Focus on finding the others who are embracing new ideas and change, work together with them, and if you can find two or three other individuals each and turn them around before long you have enough leverage to turn the mass in the middle who just want to do what everyone else is doing.
I bumped into Anjali (quel surprise!) - who has kindly summarised the day over at madebymany - and Craig from Sue Ryder Care again (we need to stop meeting like this!) plus I made a couple of new acquaintances – Helen Jerome from Wall to Wall (her company developed ‘Who Do You Think You Are' for the BBC) and had a nice chat with Marcel Baron from IBM’s innovation department.
The clip below is Seth freestyling on meatballs, marketing, marriage and dating. Shot with my Flip Ultra (Flip VRM outreach: I'd like to try the Flip mino...)
Seth Godin in London from eaon pritchard on Vimeo.
